


The Way He Knows

by Maraceles



Category: The Flash (Comics), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 00:02:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6830788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maraceles/pseuds/Maraceles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry knows that Eobard loves him.  He counts the ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1 - 3

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kyele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyele/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [The Way He Knows 從何得知](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8202673) by [jls20011425](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jls20011425/pseuds/jls20011425)



> (Warning: Yet more drabbles.)
> 
> First of all, this is all Kyele's fault. Tell me how Barry knows that Eobard loves him, she says. And because she is awesome and because I'm utter trash for this pairing, I comply. 
> 
> So.
> 
> Let's pretend that one day, in whatever manner, Barry and Eobard work things out, and they fall in love:

Barry knows that Eobard loves him in many ways both big and small. 

He knows it from the way Eobard always and without fail looks up from his work in the Cortex to search for him, from the way he meets Barry's eyes and smiles a private, secret smile that's meant only for the two of them--there is history in that smile. Barry has seen it go through many iterations, from wariness to puzzlement to a searching and almost wistful disbelief, and now it has come to mean something else entirely. Eobard smiles with his lips pressed tight, as if he can't quite believe his luck, and in his eyes is a sense of quiet wonder that grows day by day. Barry knows that Eobard's smile means adoration, and it means endless committed determination, too. Every time that Eobard smiles at him, Barry knows that Eobard is making a promise, to himself, to Barry, to both of them.

Eobard's face when he smiles--it is the first way that Barry knows Eobard loves him.

#

Barry knows it from the way Eobard flips Pandora to the station Barry likes best--Eobard hates, with a passion, the music that Barry adores. (So does Cisco.) But when Barry settles next to him in the large room that was once Eobard's office, and is now the space they both share, and he boots up his computer to do some work, Eobard looks up at him--and smiles, he always smiles--and changes the station. He does it with a sardonic look that questions Barry's taste in _everything_ , with raised eyebrows and a mocking twist to his lips, but he changes the station every time. Barry knows what the gesture means: Stay with me, Eobard is saying. Sit beside me. I want you near me, always. 

That is the second way that Barry knows Eobard loves him.

#

The third way Barry knows that Eobard loves him--well, it's a bit odd. When Eobard is distracted by another task, he will sometimes rest his hand on Barry's shoulder and then place the hand against his own chest, his fingers tapping twice over his heart. Barry asked about it once, bemused and curious, and the gesture turned out to be from the future, as simple and routine as a kiss on the cheek--but knowing that made Barry's heart stagger beneath his breastbone, because it meant that Eobard was no longer maintaining the tight control he had managed so as not to give himself away, over his foreign mannerisms that would one day originate over a hundred years into the future. Every time Eobard did it, Barry felt the need for air, he felt breathless--because it meant that Eobard finally felt safe, it meant that he was home, and it meant that he had made that home with Barry.

That is the third way that Barry knows Eobard loves him.


	2. 4 - 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fluff went out the window on this one...
> 
> Still Kyele's fault. These are legit her ideas.

Eobard Thawne has changed in his priorities, but not in his methods, nor in his morality. There are times when a pall seems to fall over his features, and in those moments, Barry knows that Eobard is seeing a world of shadows, a landscape occupied by ghosts. It makes him dangerous--not to Barry, Barry has always been and will always be real to him. But Barry sometimes fears for the people around them. The rage in Eobard's face when someone harms either of them, when someone puts their hands on Barry (or Cisco, or Caitlin, or anyone Eobard considers his own)--it reminds Barry, starkly, that he is in love with a murderer. He hasn't forgotten any of it. He is not blind. 

In those moments, the Flash pleads with the Reverse Flash for the lives of other criminals. Barry doesn't try to appeal to Eobard's sense of morality--his Reverse doesn't care about mercy or justice, or perhaps his notions of those concepts are far afield from the ones in which Barry was raised. Eobard is capable of arguing with him over the reasons and justifications inherent in serving the greater good until the heat death of each and every universe occurs. It is a near constant disagreement between them. 

But Eobard stays his hand. His eyes, obscured by glaring flares of light that are sometimes still the stuff of Barry's nightmares--they narrow as he throws his would-be victims at Barry's feet. They're alive, he says, malicious and amused. My gift to you. 

Barry sees: They're more than alive. They're nearly untouched.

It is the fourth way Barry knows that Eobard loves him.

#

In the beginning, Barry didn't trust the gifts that Eobard gave him. He always looked for the hook, the catch, and for good reason--it was how Eobard began their relationship. He provided guidance, Barry provided speed. He provided knowledge, Barry offered willingness. He gave Barry his mother's life--and in return, Barry sent him back to the future. (Or he should have; Barry broke pattern then.) It was always tit for tat, fair and supposedly balanced, and Barry had wondered once, with a quiet sense of sadness, if they had merely struck a new bargain, Barry's life for sex, Eobard's existence for love. He didn't know. Eobard didn't think about anything in the same way he did--maybe they were just different people, or maybe it was because Eobard was broken, or maybe it was that 22nd century morality coming back into play, Barry didn't know. 

The first time Eobard spared someone's life, Barry accepted the gift and took his hand, even as he kept a wary eye out for the other. They would argue over Eobard's work, and he would wonder--would Eobard leverage his help on the project? Or would Eobard expect him to look away? And they would bicker, petty little squabbles familiar to all couples, and Barry would think--will he bring it up? Is he expecting me to let him choose, is this what he's been waiting for? And then sometimes, in bed with Barry tired or sore or just plain angry, the thought would cross his mind again, and desperately he would ask himself--is _this_ the time? Will Eobard want a sexual favor? An act of submission? Or maybe a mere play to his ego?

Barry waited. And wondered. 

For _years._

Each moment crawled by, opportunity after opportunity _after opportunity_ , each one obvious and plain, each one presented and passed over, and finally it came to him with a sense of hesitant inevitability: Eobard didn't want anything in return. Barry could see it in his face, in his eyes, in the twist of his lips, because Barry had been searching for it: The thought of recompense never once crossed Eobard's mind.

It was the fifth way Barry knew that Eobard loved him.

#

When he closes his eyes, the Reverse Flash comes to him. The man as he was, the man in yellow, the nightmare figure that haunted him for years and years. Blurred and obscure, Barry can't follow him with his eyes, to his ten-year-old self the man in yellow moves too fast and can only be seen in the corner of his vision. Barry can't _see_ him, he might be anywhere, he might be _behind_ Barry, and so Barry spins around--

The dream changes. 

The Reverse Flash--and he knows the guy's name now, he recognizes that bastard who killed his mother, it was _him_ and Barry finally knows--is laughing at him. He's sweeping around Barry, too fast, always too fast. He's one step ahead like he always is, like he always will be and Barry will never ever get his father free, he's going to _fail_ after all these years of searching. The Reverse Flash knocks him to the ground. He stands over Barry--

\--and it's Dr. Wells, it can't be but it is, and he says he's proud, he says that he loves Barry, but his mask is back on and his mouth is twisting with rage. Barry holds him by the arm, desperately grabbing at his shoulder, but he can't think of anything to say and the Reverse Flash is going to kill him, his hand is vibrating and it was always going to end this way, wasn't it, Barry's not the hero after all, he's the redshirt in the red suit as the story opens, because the monster got his mother and put his father away, and now it's finally come back for him too--

Barry wakes up.

He's crying frantically, tears spilling over his cheeks, and he shouldn't reach out for Eobard but he does, and Eobard doesn't say anything at first--and that's the sixth way Barry knows that Eobard loves him. Because he understands, hideously, that Eobard doesn't really regret any of his actions, that he sees them as justified and warranted and as a response to something that Barry has done and perhaps will do again, and Barry can't help it--he doesn't blame him. Because Eobard wakes up from his own nightmares with the Flash's name on his lips, and they alternate holding one another in the dark, with each other's names held back behind their teeth and a silent pact between them. If Eobard feels satisfaction at being both the cause and balm to Barry's fear and pain, then that's okay. Barry understands. He feels the same--when Eobard yells out the Flash's name in hatred, in anguish, in desperate seething loss, Barry remembers the man who killed his mother. He looks down at Eobard's sleeping, thrashing form, and he feels _glad_.

But then they awaken. Barry holds Eobard in the quiet morning light, and Eobard holds him back just as tightly. It's an impossible agreement and yet here they are, here they are, with Eobard beginning to murmur into his hair that it's okay, it's okay, I'll never let anything happen to you again, Barry, we're going to make our own destinies, we're going to do that after all, we don't have to be those people. 

And Barry, somehow, believes him.

That is the sixth way Barry knows that Eobard loves him.

**Author's Note:**

> I will no doubt add more "ways" that Eobard loves Barry as time goes on. There will undoubtably be porn at some point, too. I'll add them as chapters here. 
> 
> (Basically, when I'm not writing "find a way or make one." Because sometimes I need a break from that Barry and Eobard's drama, ahahaha.)


End file.
